


Fighting Not to Be Alone

by Taaroko



Series: After [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Plotty, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-02-20 02:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13137180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taaroko/pseuds/Taaroko
Summary: Picks up where the S1 finale leaves off. Frank is a free man. Will be a long-ish multi-chapter fic focusing on Frank figuring out how to not be at war while Karen continues to attract trouble.(Builds on my interpretation of where Frank and Karen are emotionally by the end of "Virtue of the Vicious," which you can read in my fic "You Were the Quiet Moment Stolen from the Chaos.")





	1. A Free Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the timeline implied by canon is actually impossible. Episode 3 is Frank's birthday, November 15, and supposedly it's only Thanksgiving by the end? Yeah, no. As much as I liked the idea of Frank showing up for Thanksgiving with Karen, to me it makes more sense that the Liebermans just did late Thanksgiving to celebrate David's return, and it was actually closer to Christmas. 
> 
> This is going to be a multi-chapter fic that will span several months, and I wasn't going to start posting until I had more written, but as soon as I changed the setting to Christmas Eve, I couldn't just *not* post the first chapter on Christmas Eve.

Curtis clapped a hand on Frank’s good shoulder after the last of the other veterans had shuffled out of the room. “You did good, man.” His tone carried no expectation that it would happen again, just sincere acknowledgment of a hurdle cleared.

Frank grunted. “I dunno. Getting tortured is easier than talking about this shit.”

Curtis chuckled. “That’s how you know it’s working.”

“ _Is_ it working?” said Frank. “How can it when I gotta skip over anything in my life that didn’t happen to Pete Castiglione?”

“Well you’re still here now,” said Curtis. “So keep talking.”

Frank was silent. Curtis got to work putting away the chairs. He’d racked three of them when Frank got up and brought his own over, but he didn’t leave after hanging it up. “Truth is,” he began slowly, “when Rawlins was torturing me, I barely felt it ‘cause I was with Maria the whole time.” He could feel Curtis looking at him. He didn’t stop. “She wanted me to come home. I wanted to go with her. Lieberman had his family back, and Rawlins and Russo were the only ones left. We had it all set up so they’d go down whether or not I made it outta there. It woulda been over. But I...I stayed. I turned my back on her, and I stayed. Why’d I do that, Curt?”

“Maybe ‘cause you’re not just some ghost with unfinished business who disappears for good once it’s done.”

Frank looked around at him. He wasn’t so sure about that. How else did you describe someone who took a bullet to the brain, came back after getting taken off life support, and, once he saw the law was just gonna sweep everything under the rug, spent the next eighteen months single-mindedly hunting down every last man who had anything to do with his family’s deaths? Sure sounded like a vengeful ghost to him. Throw in the skull vest and the wounds that woulda put most people in the ground… _“You do this and I am done. That’s it, you’re dead to me.” “I’m already dead.”_ Frank’s brow furrowed and he looked down. After all the shit he’d pulled with her, he’d’ve deserved it if she’d fed him her .380 when he got her attention with the homeless guy act.

“I don’t think Maria would want you to be in a hurry to die to get back to her,” Curtis went on, grabbing another chair and folding it. “I think she’d want you to start living again, ‘cause that sure as hell ain’t what you been doing so far.” He slid the chair onto the rack.  “You got somewhere to go for Christmas Eve? Or at least something better to eat than MREs?”

Frank thought of the Liebermans. They were probably doing some Hanukkah celebration. He was pretty sure that started today this year. He was sure they’d be happy to have him after he’d bailed on their late Thanksgiving welcome home dinner for David the other day. “Christmas Eve’s for family,” he said.

The skin around Curtis’s eyes tightened, but he wisely kept his sympathy to himself. “Need another book, at least?”

“Sure.”

A few minutes later, Frank was back in the van, _The Count of Monte Cristo_ on the passenger seat. He could drive anywhere in the country right now if he wanted to. He’d already retrieved the contents of his rundown shoebox apartment. He could find some podunk town far removed from news stories about the Punisher being alive and on the loose. Instead, after about twenty minutes, he was in Hell’s Kitchen, pulling up to Karen’s apartment building.

_Christmas Eve’s for family._

He wasn’t really expecting to find her at home. She had to have someplace to go for the holiday weekend. But when he looked up at the fourth floor, her lights were on, that damn pot of white roses back on the sill. So he went up to the buzzer and pushed the button for 4E.

 _“Hello?”_ said her confused voice. There was the faintest tremor on the second syllable. Right up until that tremor, Frank wasn’t sure he was going to let her know he was there. Things had changed in that hotel—that, or they’d become clear. What hadn’t changed was what he’d done and that, whatever this thing they had between them was, he didn’t deserve it.

But the roses were on the sill, and it was Christmas Eve, and she was alone.

“Saw the flowers in your window,” he said. “Something you needed?”

A burst of static came through the speaker from her sharp intake of breath, then silence. _“Come up?”_

“Okay.”

X

Karen had placed the pot of roses back on her windowsill as soon as she saw the reports of the Punisher evading capture yet again, but she hadn’t really expected to see Frank anytime soon. In the week and a half since, she’d found every scrap of information she could about the hostage situation at the carousel (which wasn’t much and hadn’t mentioned him) while trying to convince herself he was somewhere safe. It didn’t seem likely he would have stayed in the city. She’d hoped he might find a way to contact her eventually, but she was sure that would be months down the line, and she’d been trying to be okay with that.

And now he was standing right in front of her, in the hall outside her apartment on Christmas Eve like something out of a Hallmark movie. She grabbed him by the arm and tugged him over the threshold, glancing down the hall to make sure no neighbors were staring at them before she closed the door.

This time, Frank was the one pulling her into a sudden hug. She gladly returned it, wrapping both arms tight around his shoulders and burying her face against his neck. She could’ve stayed right there forever, breathing him in. He smelled like gun oil and aftershave. It was one thing to read “Frank Castle Still at Large,” but now that she had tangible proof, the knot of tension in her chest eased. Helping him find Micro and him saving her at that hotel hadn’t gotten him killed.

It was a long moment before he pulled away, and Karen was able to get her first good look at him since the elevator. He was covered in bruises that hadn’t been there then, but they were at the greenish-yellow nearly healed stage, which surprised her. He stood at attention under her gaze, not speaking. She trailed her fingers feather-light over the place where a bullet had grazed the side of his head, then the spot on his sleeve hiding the stitches that must still be holding the skin together where that piece of shrapnel had been sticking out of him. She shook her head and held a hand to her mouth, but she was smiling.

“I’d say you should see the other guy,” he said, “but you might lose your lunch if you did.”

She let out an unwilling laugh, though she felt more like crying at the thought of how he’d gotten all those injuries. “Does that mean it’s over?” She was almost afraid to ask.

“It’s over.” He spread his hands wide. “I’m Pete Castiglione now. They wiped Frank Castle’s prints and DNA from the system and I’ve got a clean record.”

Her smile returned. That was far better than even the most optimistic scenarios she’d imagined. What was more, if it was all over and he was a free man, then that made this the first time he’d come to see her without an ulterior motive or because of some kind of threat. “It’s nice to meet you, Pete Castiglione.”

He ducked his head and rubbed his nose, hiding his own smile. She was suddenly aware that she was dressed in an oversized t-shirt and sleep shorts, with her hair in a haphazard ponytail and her face free of makeup. The Humphrey Bogart movie she’d been half paying attention to before he buzzed was still on behind her. _“A free press, like a free life, sir, is always in danger,”_ said Bogart’s voice into the pause.

“I, uh, thought you’d be outta town for the holiday.”

She knew he meant it as a sheepish excuse for himself, not a prod for explanations from her, so that was how she treated it. “And you still stopped by?” she said, tilting her head.

He shrugged. “My buddy Curt asked me if I had anywhere to go for Christmas Eve. I wanted to at least be able to tell him I made an effort.”

“You can stay if you want,” she said, trying not to let on how badly she hoped he would. She didn’t want to push, but she’d been about to spend yet another Christmas holiday alone, with just a couple of strings of lights and a miniature tree that only had a gift from Foggy (who believed she was with family) and what was clearly a bottle of whiskey from Jessica under it. “I was about to order takeout from the Chinese place around the corner, so it wouldn’t exactly be a festive dinner, but…”

“Yeah.” He didn’t smile with his mouth this time, but his eyelids crinkled. “I’d like that.”

He joined her on the couch for the rest of the Humphrey Bogart movie, and they were soon eating their dinner out of takeout cartons. She was better at chopsticks than him, and she rubbed his nose in it by stealing pieces of General Tso’s chicken out of his carton before he could stop her. He retaliated by stealing her eggroll. The rest of the food disappeared quickly, but he made no move to depart after it was gone.

Feeling bold and wanting some of the warmth of that hug back, she tucked her legs up on the couch and leaned against his shoulder. She half-expected him to leap out of the way and make an excuse to leave, but he simply lifted his arm when she drew nearer, then wrapped it around her once she was tucked against him. There were a lot of important things they were going to have to discuss at some point, but she wasn’t bringing any of them up tonight and neither was he. It was an absurdly normal, cozy sort of evening compared to all their past interactions. It was also the best Christmas Eve she’d had since she was seventeen.


	2. Peace on Earth

Frank woke up gradually as sunlight filled the room. He wrapped his arms a little more snugly around the warm, slender form pressed against him. It was Christmas morning, and he was still in Karen’s living room. They must’ve fallen asleep sometime in the middle of the next movie in the Bogart marathon, and they’d shifted so that they were tangled together along the full length of the couch. When had that happened? He didn’t even remember kicking his boots off or which of them turned off the TV.

There were a lot of reasons Frank probably shouldn’t let himself get so comfortable with Karen, but she was what he’d thought of when Curtis told him to start living again. After what passed between them in that elevator, he woulda ended up outside her door sooner or later. Being on this couch with her made the sudden absence of a war to fight a little less terrifying. And it was as much for her sake as for his. She’d already come too close to being a casualty in his wars. Feeling her warm and breathing next to him kept him from thinking about all the ways he coulda gotten her killed, and that wasn’t even counting her knack for attracting trouble all on her own. If he’d been so much as a second later into that hotel room, he would’ve watched her die, same as he’d watched his family die. He’d started having nightmares about that, mixed in with the old ones. 

Before the carousel, he’d only been afraid of leaving Maria without a husband, Frankie and Lisa without a father. He never expected it to be the other way around until it happened. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been able to react in time to protect them. Now, he didn’t think he’d ever stop being afraid of watching the people he loved die bloody, which was why it had been easier not having anyone who fit that description. It mighta been enough to send him running as far away from Karen as he could. The problem there was that he’d managed to lose what was left of his heart to the one woman on the planet who’d probably have an easier time getting herself killed  _ without _ him around. He couldn’t just leave her to the mercy of the next Lewis Wilson who came along. 

She stirred in his arms, then opened those impossibly blue eyes of hers. 

“Mornin’,” he said, his voice rough from sleep.

She smiled. “Merry Christmas, Frank.”

“Merry Christmas, Karen.” 

“I thought you’d be gone when I woke up.”

“You kicking me out, Miss Page?” He was liable to kiss her if she kept looking at him with that sleepy smile. 

“Why would I do that?” she said, snuggling closer, her hands tucked up against his chest. “I’m still not over the novelty of you visiting when it’s not life and death.”

“Me either.”

“Do we need to talk about what happens next?”

“Probably should.” 

“Okay, then as much as I love the roses, this isn’t 1974, and I’d like a more straightforward way to get in touch with you.” She moved to sit up.

“Think I can do that,” he said, following suit. 

“I, uh, might have a spare toothbrush you can use. Unless you wanted to head out.”

Her eyes begged him to stay, and he was powerless. “Toothbrush sounds good right about now.”

She darted into the bedroom long enough to retrieve it and one of those miniature toothpaste tubes you always get at the dentist, then pointed him towards the half-bath by the door before disappearing back into the bedroom. He was done with everything he needed to do in five minutes, but he could hear the shower going by then, so he looked through the fridge and pantry to see what breakfast-building materials were available. The kitchen wasn’t as well-stocked as David’s basement lair had been, but Frank wasn’t shooting for five star cuisine here. 

By the time she reappeared, dressed in yoga pants and a loose sweater, her damp hair up in a bun, he was sliding the second omelette off the skillet onto a plate. “Hope you like ham, cheese, and tomato,” he said, setting the skillet back on the stove and bringing both plates over to the table, where there were already glasses of water and mugs of black coffee waiting for them. 

“You can cook?” said Karen, taking a seat with a puzzled grin. 

“When the occasion calls for it,” he said, taking the other seat. She went for the coffee first, then dug in to the omelette. He made it two bites into his own before he couldn’t take it anymore. “Look, Karen, I know what that was in the elevator.” She froze, fork still clamped between her teeth, eyes wide. “I’m not a big enough asshole to deny it or try to hide from it.”

Her eyes lit up in a way he hadn’t seen before, and it made his stomach do a somersault. She swallowed the bite of omelette. “Then what’s that look for?”

“I just don’t know how we got here,” he said. “Why’d you even talk to me that day on the street? Hell, earlier than that. What made you go looking for the reasons why the guy who walked into a hospital and emptied a shotgun in your direction would do anything?”

Karen took her time chewing and swallowing another bite before she answered. “It wasn’t about you at first. First there was that x-ray of your bullet wound slipped in with all the crime scene photos. I’d seen cover-ups before, and that didn’t feel right.”

He smiled and got another piece of omelette on his fork. “So you started digging.” She was something else. “Second hospital went better than the first one. You crossed that red line like it was nothing.”

“Well, you weren’t making it easy for us to help you,” she said, smirking. 

“That’s ‘cause I didn’t give a shit what happened to me anymore. You changed that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So you thanked me by using me as bait?”

He avoided her gaze. “I’m not proud of that,” he said. “Would you believe me if I said it was just as much about trying to convince you to stay clear of the fight I was about to pick as it was about getting intel?”

“I guess I’d already given you pretty good reason to doubt I’d sit quietly at home while the mystery remained unsolved.” She took a drink from the glass of water next to her plate. “I appreciate you asking nicely for me to keep my head down this time.”

Frank gave a rueful laugh. “I learned my lesson that you’re impossible to scare away.” He grimaced and set his fork down. “What happened with Schoonover…. You said I was dead to you. I never woulda bothered you again if I’d had a choice.”

She reached for his hand. “I’m glad you did. I was just so relieved that you weren’t lying dead somewhere that what I said before didn’t matter to me anymore.” Her jaw clenched and her grip on his fingers tightened. “Did you hear about Midland Circle?”

“Read your article on it. And the obituary. Sorry you had to go through that.”

“We finally had the funeral in September. They still haven’t found a body, but they’re not really looking anymore. The ground around where the building was isn’t stable enough.” Tears filled her eyes, but they didn’t overflow. “That’s the worst part. If I knew for sure he was gone, maybe I’d stop imagining he’s about to walk through my office door every time I’m working late. Sometimes I wonder if it was my fault. Maybe if I’d tried harder to spend time with him or if I’d refused to let him push me away, he’d still be alive.”

“That why you helped me?”

“It might’ve been part of it.”

“I get that,” he said. “I know I’m not the only one with ghosts.”

She grimaced. “I don’t think mine really compare with yours. Losing a guy I worked with for less than a year and went on one date with isn’t in the same ballpark as losing the mother of your children.”

“Grief ain’t a contest. You still had the chance to see what would happen taken away from you.”

The last traces of omelette were soon gone from their plates. She gathered them up and took them to the dishwasher. He brought the glasses and coffee mugs over. When everything was loaded, she turned to smile at him, but it was pained. “It’s strange, you know?” she said. “When you love someone, you want the best for them. You want them to be happy. But for me, that means wishing your family was still here, even if we never would’ve met.”

“Hey,” said Frank. His voice came out even rougher than usual. He reached for her the same way he had after Wilson blew himself up, curling a hand around the side of her head and looking her in the eyes. This time, tears had escaped to run down her cheeks. “If I have to still be alive in a world where they’re not, then you’re what makes that okay, you got that? It’s been that way ever since you shoved that photo under my nose. You helped me remember the good parts instead of staying stuck in how it ended. You made me think there could be good parts again.” 

“Frank,” she said, the same way she’d said it in the elevator. He drew her closer so he could press his lips to her forehead. He wanted to kiss her for real—he wanted it so badly that he ached—, but that could wait. The revenge was over, but he had only just begun to let go of Maria and the kids, and he had no idea if he’d be any good at being Pete Castiglione. He had no intention of pulling Karen down with him; he was going to pick himself back up. That way, when he did kiss her, he could do it as her equal. 

When he pulled back, she looked into his eyes. They were the same height, so she could do that straight on. They’d been communicating without speaking on a level he’d almost never experienced—either with Maria or with fellow soldiers in battle—since pretty much the day they met, and right now she seemed to understand everything on his mind without him having to say it. 

They ended up spending the rest of Christmas Day together. She somehow hadn’t been to Rockefeller Center at Christmas since moving to New York City, so he fixed that. They maintained some form of physical contact almost the whole time, whether their gloved hands were intertwined or he had an arm around her shoulders and she had hers around his waist. He bought her hot chocolate from one of the vendors and watched her eyes glitter in the lights of the giant tree.

On the ice, his memories showed him sunny winter days teaching Frankie and Lisa how to skate at this exact outdoor rink, then Maria yelling at him when he got them going too fast and Frankie ended up with a bloody lip and Lisa with a twisted ankle. In the present, Karen glided onto the ice and swiveled to face him, and he watched her expression fall into a pout when he slid right up to her and stopped with all the natural ease of years and years on the school hockey team growing up in Queens. He flashed her a smirk, asking if she’d expected him to have never done this before. Blushing, she admitted that maybe she had, so he chased her around the rink, both of them weaving between crowds of slower skaters and laughing. 

Nobody would’ve recognized the Frank Castle of the past two years that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, it's been mostly cute stuff so far, but this story does have a plot, and it will be here soon.
> 
> Probably going to post the first chapter of the companion fic that follows Matt during his return to Hell's Kitchen before I post another chapter of this one. They follow the same timeline and there will be crossovers.


	3. Let's Do Lunch

Pete Castiglione found construction work in Queens without much difficulty. This time, the project was putting up some office building, and his job didn’t involve any sledgehammers. Thanks to the money David had given him, he also found an apartment not too far from the site. He’d have been fine in anything with a roof, power, and water, but this time he aimed for a place that wouldn’t make Karen worry about him. The one he chose wasn’t what most people would call roomy or nice, but it had an actual kitchen, the bedroom was separate from the living room, and it was clean. He’d sent Karen a text with the number of his current burner phone. He planned to swap it out for a new one every other week.

Curtis must’ve thought he was real funny, giving him another book about a man out for revenge, but Frank kept reading _The Count of Monte Cristo_ anyway. He went back to the group for the Tuesday meeting. He didn’t talk this time, just listened. There was a new guy there. Jimmy. Early thirties. Three years out of his last tour as a Navy SEAL. He told them in a hoarse voice about his wife Alice, who’d died in childbirth nine months after he came home, along with the baby girl. He’d tried returning to the Navy, but he didn’t pass the psych eval and they wouldn’t take him back. He felt like everything that gave his life meaning had vanished all at once.

Frank couldn’t decide whether he or Jimmy had it worse.

When the session ended, a few of the guys were gathered around Curtis, but Jimmy headed for the door. Frank only hesitated for a second before following. “Hey, Squid,” he said.

Jimmy stopped and looked around at him. “Jarhead,” he countered. They both smirked, and the haunted look in Jimmy’s eyes became less pronounced.

“Wanna go for drinks?” said Frank. It would mean he couldn’t go see Karen tonight, but it was probably better if he didn’t crowd her.

“What do you want to drink with a sorry asshole like me for?”

Frank shrugged. “Figured two vets with dead families could sit around over a couple beers and not talk about it for a while.”

“Sounds better than drinking alone, I guess.”

They went to a dive bar the next block over. The not talking lasted for the first couple rounds of beers. Then Jimmy glanced at Frank. “What happened to your family?”

Frank glared at him, but decided it was better it came out here than in front of the whole group, where someone might find it a pretty big coincidence that the same thing happened to Pete Castiglione’s family as Frank Castle’s. “Gunned down. Right in front of me.” For the millionth time, he saw it happen again in his mind. He unclenched his jaw so he could take a long swig from his current bottle.

“Shit,” said Jimmy. “Bastards responsible still breathing?”

“Nope.” Or at least not breathing unassisted, in Billy Russo’s case.

Jimmy nodded. He drank the rest of his third bottle in one go. “I think I envy you. You could do something about it. I just had to pay medical bills and then funeral expenses. There wasn’t anyone to blame. There wasn’t a _reason_.” The knuckles of the hand gripping the empty bottle were white.

Frank thought if he’d been in Jimmy’s shoes, with no one to kill for what happened to Maria, Frankie, and Lisa, he probably still would’ve found a home for a bullet. Just one. He didn’t say it out loud, and looking at Jimmy, he was struck with the certainty that he didn’t have to. Maybe that was why Jimmy had come to Curtis’s group tonight. To find a reason not to do it.

“Being able to do something about it doesn’t make the loss hurt less. Just makes it harder to figure out how to do anything else when it’s over.”

Jimmy looked at him, and Frank saw the same unbearable sadness in his eyes that he’d spent the better part of two years burying under rage, hatred, and blood. He heard Karen’s voice in his mind. _Endless, echoing loneliness_. He felt a fierce surge of protectiveness for this near-stranger, same as he had for Sarah Lieberman before she was reunited with David.

“Hey, uh, you should come back on Thursday,” he said roughly. “You’re alright, for a Squid.”

X

Karen had been having lunch with Trish Walker and Jessica Jones every Wednesday since September. It had started with Karen and Trish putting their heads together to figure out the right way to tell the city about Midland Circle and the nefarious organization masterminding it. By the time story was published in the _Bulletin_ and had been thoroughly canvassed on _Trish Talk_ , lunch on Wednesday had become a tradition.

Jessica had joined in after Matt’s funeral, and any initial awkwardness vanished after Karen realized how hard the grouchy, alcoholic P.I. was taking his death. Somewhat against her will, it seemed, in the short week he’d been her lawyer, she’d grown to like him much more than she liked most people. Karen had told her the story of Matt and Foggy showing up out of nowhere to be her lawyers, much like Matt had done for Jessica, and that had been enough common ground for them to work with.

“So when can I set you up for those lessons?” said Trish the second they all sat down in the pastry shop she’d chosen this week. Her Christmas present to Karen had been a month of free Krav Maga sessions with her own trainer.

“Jeez, Trish, she can’t even get past New Year’s first?” said Jessica, though there was enough affection in her tone to make it clear she was teasing.

“I just want to make sure my friend is prepared the next time someone like Lewis Wilson comes along.”

“Thanks! That’s comforting,” said Karen, a little too nervous at the possibility to make her sarcasm convincing.

Trish immediately looked apologetic. “God, I didn’t mean—” She reached across the table to grip Karen’s hand. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re in danger all the time. That’s not what the lessons are about.”

“No, it’s okay. I get it,” said Karen. “It’s about not having to feel powerless, threat or no threat. It’s why I have my concealed carry license.”

“You know, if…,” Jessica began grudgingly, “if you’re ever worried you might have gotten on someone’s bad side with something you publish, I can check them out for you. Friends and family discount.”

It was more than Karen would’ve expected, and Trish was doing a bad job of hiding her smile behind her cup of chai. “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Karen. “Really. But this conversation is much too heavy for lunch at a place called Skippity Scones.”

“Agreed,” said Trish. “But seriously, about the lessons—”

Karen laughed. “I can start tonight if Damion’s free.”

“Perfect,” said Trish.

The waitress came by with their food, and they all tucked in. Karen didn’t think she’d ever had a better scone in her life. Certainly not one that was the size of her face and covered in raspberries and cream. “So what story are you working on now?” said Trish.

“I just started a new one,” said Karen. “You know that so-called protest that got busted up last week?”

“You mean those neo-Nazi assholes who crashed the grand opening of that Turkish restaurant?” said Jessica.

“Yeah,” said Karen. “Ellison wants me to look into it, see if it was a one-off or if there’s anything more to it.”

“He thinks there’s more?” said Trish.

“Maybe,” said Karen. “There’s a forum online where they planned it, and it’s had a lot of activity on it from users with New York geotags.”

They moved on to discuss the kinds of segments Trish had lined up for the next few days, and, after some prodding from Trish, Jessica told them about her last couple of cases. One was infidelity, with the husband as the client. She’d discovered within forty-eight hours that the wife was squeaky clean; it was the husband who was cheating. He just wanted dirt on her so the divorce would go better and he could get custody of the kids. Jessica had taken great pleasure in handing the wife all the evidence she needed to get full custody, more than her share of the assets, and very generous child support.

Karen’s and Trish’s lunch hours were almost over, so they all got up to leave. Trish took a car back to her studio, but Karen only had a couple of blocks to walk to get back to the _Bulletin_ , which was along Jessica’s route.

“You’ve been awfully smiley today,” Jessica observed wryly. “What’s that about?”

“I haven’t been smiley,” said Karen. She could feel her cheeks heating up, but it was so cold outside that everyone’s cheeks were pink anyway. Jessica couldn’t possibly make anything of it.

“Yeah, and now you’re blushing. Dish. Who’s the guy?”

Karen let out a laugh in protest, but she knew she wasn’t getting out of this. On the rare occasions Jessica Jones became interested in someone else’s personal life, there was no escaping until she got her answers. “I might’ve had some unexpected company for Christmas, and it was…” She folded her hands more snugly around her to-go coffee cup and smiled down at it. “It was really nice.”

“Wow,” said Jessica, smirking and leaning back in her chair. “This must be good. Maybe I should’ve gotten you sexy underwear instead of that bottle of whiskey.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “It’s not like that. We’re not even dating. We’ve got this...beyond intense connection, but he’s a widower and a...there really needs to be a word that means ‘father who lost his children,’ and he’s still working through a lot of stuff.” She brought the cup up to her face and took a drink, more to hide her expression than because she particularly wanted coffee at the moment.

“So...we’re talking about Frank Castle.”

Karen sprayed her mouthful of coffee all over the sidewalk in front of them, then rounded on Jessica, horrified. She’d gone a whole year keeping Frank’s survival a secret from everyone, even Foggy, and now she’d allowed someone to learn of her involvement with him in under a week.

“How did you—”

“Come on,” said Jessica, giving her a flat look. “Couple weeks ago you were telling us about how he rescued you from a bomber, and now you expect me to believe you’ve met a _different_ guy with a dead family and shit to work through since then?”

“You-you can’t tell anyone—,” Karen began, frantic.

“Hey, it’s fine,” said Jessica, her brow furrowing. She stuffed the hand that wasn’t holding her own coffee in her pocket and kept walking. “I mean, he’s a little short for my taste….”

Karen hastened to catch up, her anxiety dropping a couple notches. “That’s your objection to the possibility of me dating him?” she said incredulously. “He’s short.”

“Hey, if he actually means to work through his shit instead of dragging you into it, then he’s already better at relationships than I am, so he might just be a keeper.”

Karen glanced around to make sure nobody else walking past was listening in. They weren’t. “And what he did doesn’t bother you?” she said.

Jessica grimaced and popped the lid off her coffee cup so she could pour whiskey into it from a flask. “If my family had died the way his did and nobody bothered to throw the assholes who did it in prison, I probably would’ve tried to kill them too.” She drained the rest of the contents of the cup, then chased it with what was left in the flask. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Karen marveled at her apparent ability to find people whose lives made hers seem happy and tame by comparison. She hadn’t considered before that Jessica might actually identify with Frank, as someone who’d suffered such a similar loss. “Thanks,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jessica is such a joy to write.


	4. Ghosts and Demons

Thursday was the first hard day since Christmas. The first hard day since he’d dragged Billy’s face across a shattered mirror, really. It started off no worse than usual, but one of the guys on the construction site was bragging about something his twelve-year-old girl made him. That was how old Lisa would’ve been, but Frank had thought “that’s how old Lisa is.” Moments like that didn’t happen very often and only lasted a second every time, but they always froze the air solid in his lungs.

He hadn’t been following the crime in the city beyond reading Karen’s articles, and he hadn’t gone after anyone not involved in his family’s deaths since Lewis Wilson. But now he wanted to kill something, and he spent the rest of the day installing pipes with that urge itching at the back of his mind.

Five o’clock came, and he was the first one off the site. He headed back to his apartment, and by the time he unlocked the door and stepped inside, he had a half-formed plan for how to obtain another police scanner. That was when he noticed the potted cactus sitting on his kitchen counter, which had definitely not been there when he left for work. Already on edge, he went into high alert, grabbing the gun out of the holster attached to the back of his waistband and checking both rooms for signs of intruders. There was nothing but the cactus, but he didn’t fully relax.

A corner of an envelope poked out from under the pot. Frank frowned at it and pulled it out. Inside was a short note:

_It’s just a cactus. You can put the gun away now.  
Happy housewarming, asshole. _

_P.S. If you don’t come over for New Year’s Eve, I will tell Sarah where you live._

He checked his locks, which showed no signs of tampering. Same for his window latches. He then spent the next half hour searching every nook and cranny in the apartment for hidden cameras, but found none.

Frank looked at the note again and ran a hand through his hair, feeling a twinge of shame for thinking David might’ve done something like bugging his place. It grew sharper when he remembered that tonight was a group meeting night. He needed to make sure Jimmy was there and doing okay, but he’d almost forgotten about his new drinking buddy and gone charging off to get more blood on his hands instead.

He took a long shower, scrubbing his skin hard, as if he could wash away the bloodlust along with the sweat and grime from the construction site. He braced his hands against the wall beneath the showerhead, trying to think of the living instead of the dead. Karen, Curtis, and David and his family. The people who’d be disappointed in him if he let himself get sucked back in even after finishing what he’d set out to do. And Jimmy. If Frank couldn’t beat this, then what hope was there for the Squid?

It was happening again. He was back on the picnic blanket with Maria, Frankie, and Lisa. Lisa was teasing Frankie about something and Maria was smiling at them. She’d been shooting him looks all day like she could hardly believe what he’d promised her, that he wasn’t going back out. The park around them had gotten quiet apart from the music of the carousel. Then Frank heard a grown man yell somewhere off to his seven or eight o’clock. It set off all his alarms, but this wasn’t the battlefield, and he wasn’t going to jump at every noise. He ignored it...for about five seconds. Then he turned to look, just to make sure it was nothing. He barely had time to see the cluster of men in biker jackets off by the edge of the carousel, a second group advancing from the direction of the Heckscher Ballfields, and a third coming from around the side of the Ballfields Café before everything erupted in gunfire. He looked back at Maria and the kids, thinking he was either gonna dive on top of them or grab them and run, but it was already too late.

With a broken roar of mingled fury and anguish, Frank slammed his fist into the tile, shattering it. The water going down the drain turned pink.

X

After another day and a half working on the new story, Karen was more and more convinced it would indeed turn out to be more than just a single disturbance at a restaurant opening. She’d been combing through the forums where that “protest” was planned for hours, trying to filter out the more revolting content in favor of figuring out who these people were and what they were likely to do next. For now, there was a lot of clamoring in the discussion threads for more efforts to violently oust various immigrants and ethnic groups who had “stolen” their jobs, but no specific plans.

The first forum eventually led her to several other equally vile websites, and she strongly suspected that at least a few of them were created and run by the same people or individual, because those sites all used Captain America’s shield prominently in their designs, alongside the kinds of sentiments and rhetoric the man himself had fought against in World War II.

Before she knew it, she had stayed after hours researching again. She made herself step away from it and go home, leaving the work laptop at the office so she wouldn’t be tempted to pull an all-nighter. Without work to focus on, she became aware of her sore, aching body again. Her first Krav Maga training session with Damion had been the hardest workout she’d ever had in her life. They’d planned out all the sessions included in Trish’s present and Karen had no intention of giving up, but she mostly just wished her monthly visits to the shooting range to keep her marksmanship sharp made her feel safe enough to not have to bother.

She was unsuccessfully attempting to stretch some of the kinks out of her limbs while debating whether to actually cook something or order takeout when her phone rang.

The name “Pete” was flashing on her screen. Her pulse quickened and she accepted the call at once. Even after the time they’d spent together over Christmas weekend and the fact that he’d given her his number, it was still hard to get used to the idea that he might reach out to her multiple times a week now.

“Hey, Frank,” she said. Her smile only lasted for as long as it took him to begin speaking.

_“During my trial, you said you knew I wasn’t a monster.”_

“Frank, what’s wrong?” said Karen, fear leaping up in her chest. She curled her hand more tightly around her phone. It was a poor substitute for being able to physically touch him.

_“I need you to say it again.”_

“Did something happen?” She was picturing all the times she’d seen him badly wounded and wondering if that was how he was going to look the next time she saw him.

 _“Karen,”_ he said. His voice was ragged. _“Please.”_

Karen’s throat burned, but she forced herself to talk through it. “You are _not_ a monster, Frank. Tell me what’s wrong.”

There was a long pause. Karen listened to his breathing. _“Can I come see you?”_ he said eventually.

“Of course.”

_“Something I gotta do first, but I’ll be there in a couple hours.”_

“I’ll be waiting,” said Karen.

He hung up, and she sank slowly onto her couch. As worried as she was for him, she wasn’t worried about whatever it was he had to do first. She vividly remembered what his voice had sounded like when he’d spoken about violence and death that he believed was necessary. No, this sounded more like there was a duty he needed to fulfill.

X

By the time Frank made it to St. John’s in Brooklyn, he was a few minutes late. Michelle, the Army corporal who was almost always there but spent far more time listening than talking, was telling the group about her last assignment in Afghanistan. When Frank walked in, a few heads turned in his direction, including Curtis’s and Jimmy’s. He took one of the empty seats, and he saw Curtis glance at his bandaged knuckles and raise his eyebrows. He shrugged and flexed his fingers. Jimmy made eye contact with him and nodded, as if to say, “Here I am.” Frank nodded back.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Michelle. “The whole thing went smooth. Objectives completed, no mistakes, no casualties, barely even any injuries. Probably the best assignment they ever sent me on. Closest thing to what I pictured war being like as that eighteen-year-old girl who enlisted right outta high school. So why was that the one that made me scared to go back?”

“Maybe you were afraid the scales would get balanced if you did,” said the guy sitting to Michelle’s left. Frank didn’t remember his name. “Last assignment went perfect, so the next one would have to be a total shitshow to even things out.”

“We like to think that we’ll be ready for it when things go right,” said Curtis. “I mean, that’s what we all want, isn’t it? But when they’ve been going wrong long enough, you get used to that, and even a change for the better can be terrifying.”

The rest of the meeting went well. Frank contributed to the discussion in small ways this time. When everyone else shuffled for the door, Jimmy came up to him. “Thought you weren’t going to make it tonight,” he said.

“So did I,” said Frank.

“What’d you do to your hand?”

“Punched the tile in my shower.”

“Maybe you should sign up at a boxing gym or something,” said Curtis, coming over to join them. “That way when you punch things, you can still get your deposit back.”

“Know any good ones?” said Jimmy.

X

Frank arrived at Karen’s building about the same time as he had on Saturday. Her imagination had been running wild ever since he called. When he showed up with no blood on him and nothing but the faint traces of his old bruises and awkwardly-tied bandages on the knuckles of his right hand, she almost broke down crying from sheer relief and tackled him in a hug. “What happened?” she said. He caught her hand as he pulled away, and they made it over to the couch.

“For a second, I forgot they were gone. There’s no one left to make pay for it, but I still wanted…”

“You still wanted to find someone to punish.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. “Yeah.”

She vividly remembered that conversation they’d had in the jail, and the fear on his face at the thought that this was just who he was now. She felt like something was squeezing her heart. “I want you to tell me everything, Frank. All of it. From what happened in Afghanistan to the showdown you had at the carousel.”

“You sure you want me to unload all that on you?”

“I know a lot of it won’t be easy to hear, but that’s not what matters. Maybe telling the whole story from beginning to end will make it easier for you to leave it in the past.”

He nodded, but he seemed a little nervous. “Okay.”

For the next two hours, Karen felt like she was drawing poison from a wound. Occasionally while he talked, one of them would get up to pace. She cried a few times—usually when his voice got rough. Twice (first when he told her how Schoonover, Rawlins, and Bennett were transporting the heroin into the US and again when he revealed Billy Russo’s involvement) she interrupted him with outraged streams of curse words. Whenever he became so furious that he could barely speak, she reached for him, and the words started coming easier again.

They sat in silence for a moment when he got to the end, now in the same position they’d been in before they fell asleep on Christmas Eve, with Karen curled up against Frank’s side and his arm around her shoulders.

“Hungry?” said Karen.

“Starving.”

They ordered takeout again, this time from a Thai place.

“Do I get to hear your whole story sometime?” Frank asked out of nowhere when they were halfway through their food.

Karen almost choked on her pad thai. By the time she had successfully swallowed, her face was bright red and she couldn’t look at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Probably coulda timed that better.”

“It’s okay,” said Karen. “There’s a lot of my past that I’ve never told anyone about. But…,” she mustered the courage to meet his gaze, “if there’s one person I’m not afraid to share it with, it’s you.”

“Good,” he said. “Wouldn’t really be fair if this only worked one way. Doesn’t have to be right now, though.”

She was grateful for that. “What stopped you tonight?” she asked.

“A few things. That goddamn cactus from David was the first one that tripped me up. Then it was your voice. And there’s this ex-Navy SEAL at Curtis’s group. Jimmy. His wife and baby died in childbirth a couple years back, and he’s barely hanging on. I couldn’t think about taking out more criminal assholes without picturing Jimmy putting a gun to his head.”

Karen wasn’t sure she could handle talking about another veteran who’d lost his family just now, so she didn’t ask about that. “David got you a cactus?” she said.

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “Damn thing was sitting on my counter when I got back from the site.”

“How hard did you overreact to that?”

“Spent the next half-hour making sure the place was secure.”

Karen smiled.

“He left a note under it. You got plans for New Year’s?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of this chapter was unplanned, but I was rewatching all of Frank's scenes in Daredevil S2 (again) and that conversation he has with Karen about whether or not he's a monster really got to me. I'm really glad that happened, because I was having a hard time figuring out how to make this fic appropriately angsty, and I feel like it's extremely important for post-revenge Frank that he is *afraid* that he won't be able to stop being the Punisher.


	5. Plus One

Friday evening found Frank meeting Jimmy at a boxing gym in Hell’s Kitchen. He hadn’t boxed since high school, and he couldn’t see how this wasn’t going to feel like a step or five down from Marine Corps Martial Arts, but he really didn’t want to end up breaking anything else in his apartment. Besides, Jimmy had shown more enthusiasm for the idea than he had for anything else since he’d met him, so Frank would give it a shot.

Like the sport of boxing itself in the U.S., Fogwell’s Gym had plainly seen better days. Posters on the walls advertised fights from decades ago and the only guys practicing there when Frank and Jimmy arrived were the grizzled has-been sort who still came in to practice because it was the only way they knew how to avoid beer bellies and admitting they were getting old.

Frank liked it. For now, his busted ribs were still too sore for it to be wise to do anything beyond a very basic workout, but it was good for getting back into the swing of this particular fighting style. A couple of the older guys stopped by to offer Frank and Jimmy a few tips on their way out. They were a father and son pair, Bob and Ronnie. Bob had served in Vietnam, Ronnie in the Gulf War. Both were Navy. Jimmy swapped some stories with them while Frank continued beating up a punching bag. He introduced him to them as “My Jarhead buddy Pete.”

Just when they were about ready to call it a night, there was a commotion over near the entrance. Frank and Jimmy abandoned their cooldown exercises to see what was going on. Some soft, badly-shaven twenty-something kid in a Captain America ball cap was in the middle of an angry argument with one of the oldest guys at the gym. He waved a fistful of pamphlets in the guy’s face and shouted that he could hand out his materials wherever he goddamn pleased. That earned him a pop on the nose and a hammer lock. All his angry bluster turned to whimpers in a second, and the old guy tossed him out on his ass, to a round of cheers and guffaws from the rest of the guys.

Frank picked up one of the pamphlets while everyone else gathered around the victorious old guy. Printed above an image of Captain America’s shield, it read, “The Time for Real Americans to Stand and Fight Is Now!” Then, beneath the shield, “This Country Belongs to Us, Not the Foreign Invaders.” Frank gritted his teeth and crumpled up the pamphlet. That asshole thought he was a real American, did he? And what had he done to earn that? No way he’d enlisted, and even if he had, no way he’d made it past the first week of boot camp. No, he was just sore that a cushy life wasn’t handed to him the second he reached adulthood, and instead of getting out there and earning one, he was blaming his own failure on people who actually knew what hard work was.

Frank would’ve tossed the wadded up pamphlet in the garbage where it belonged, but then he remembered the story Karen had told him she was working on. As far as he remembered, she hadn’t said a thing about guys walking around in Cap caps trying to hand out recruitment materials. He might’ve just found her a new lead.

X

The doorbell rang at 7:00 on the dot. David went to get it. He’d insisted on being the one to get the door every time since he came home, even when they knew exactly who was coming over and when. Leo had tried to answer it once, and David had shouted at her. He never shouted at Zach or Leo, and the guests had only been his in-laws coming for Hanukkah. He’d apologized to her later that night, but even though the madness was all over, he couldn’t stop picturing people coming to take Sarah and the kids away again.

The ribbing he was planning to give Frank about it taking three attempts before he actually showed up for dinner evaporated when he opened the door and saw that the man wasn’t alone. Standing on the porch next to him, bundled up in a coat and scarf and clutching a tupperware container and a box of crackers, was a tall, willowy woman with strawberry blonde hair and startlingly blue eyes.

“Fr—uh, Pete!” said David, floundering. He had been so uncertain that Frank would show up in the first place that he hadn’t told Sarah and the kids he’d invited him. Now, not only was he here, but he’d brought a plus one. “Glad you could make it.”

“David,” said Frank with a curt nod, “this is—”

“Karen Page,” said David, eyebrows raised. He could feel Frank’s gaze turn stony on him, but he stayed focused on Karen, grinning as he stepped aside to let them in. “You’re the one who tracked me down for this asshole.” He clapped Frank on the shoulder as he passed—a second before he remembered what that shoulder had been through in the last month and a half. He flinched, but Frank showed no sign that it had hurt. Instead, he fixed David with a glare.

“How do you already know who she is?” said Frank, his voice low and dangerous.

David stared at him, nonplussed. “...You brought her to my house, but you’re mad I know what she looks like? You didn’t have a problem when I set up a camera pointing at her windowsill.”

Frank made a face like he was still annoyed but knew he had no right to be, and David smothered the laugh trying to fight its way out of him. No need to throw more fuel on the fire this early in the evening.

“Anyway, Karen, it’s nice to finally meet you.” He shut the door behind them.

“I’m really glad Pete was able to help you get back to your family,” said Karen, shifting her appetizers to one hand so she could shake his.

“So am I,” said David. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay him for that.”

Just then, two pairs of feet came thundering down the stairs and they were set upon by Leo and Zach. “Pete’s here?” said Leo. “Hi, Pete!” Most of the timidness she’d shown when Frank and Madani met them at the van was gone, and she eyed Karen furtively.

Zach’s approach was far less subtle. “Pete has a girlfriend?” he said. David and Leo both froze and stared at Frank and Karen, who shot each other brief glances.  

By Zach’s belligerent tone and expression, he hadn’t simply blurted this out, but had said it in a calculated attempt to make Frank and Karen uncomfortable. However, Frank simply looked him dead in the eyes and said, “Pretty perceptive, kid.”

David saw Karen smile before she could force her face back into neutrality. As much as he’d wanted to tease Frank about Karen himself, he felt mortified. “Hey, manners, Zach,” he chided. “Is that how you introduce yourself to a lady?”

“Sorry,” said Zach grudgingly. “I’m Zach. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” said Karen, who looked amused at Zach’s grumpiness, which Zach had noticed and made him even grumpier. “I’m Karen.”

“I’m Leo. Can I help you with anything?” said Leo.

“Thanks,” said Karen, handing her the tupperware and crackers. Frank handed David the bottle of rosé he’d been holding, then helped Karen off with her coat. As he showed them where they could put their winter gear, David was startled by how easy Frank’s movements seemed to be. He was raising his right arm as easy as his left, didn’t seem to have a limp, and his breathing was fine. He knew Frank could take a beating, but he couldn’t possibly have healed already, could he? He’d been shot multiple times, practically had his chest caved in, and had more bruised skin than not the last time he saw him, and that wasn’t even three weeks ago. Now, just from looking at him, you wouldn’t know anything had happened.

David was jerked out of these thoughts by the sound of Leo’s voice. “Mom, Pete’s here!” she called, trotting over to the kitchen.

“Yeah, and he brought his girlfriend!” Zach yelled after her. David made to grab Zach and give him a noogie, but he saw it coming, slipped out of his grip easily, and darted into the living room, cackling.

Sarah appeared then, Leo practically dragging her along, not that she was resisting. “Hi, Pete! It’s so good to see you again,” she said, looking both confused and happy.

“Mom, this is Karen,” said Leo. “Karen, this is my mom, Sarah.”

“Karen,” said Sarah. “Welcome to Casa Lieberman, I guess.” She shot David an if-we-run-out-of-food-because-you-didn’t-tell-me-we-were-having-company-you-are-in-big-trouble look before warmly shaking Karen’s hand.

“Thank you,” said Karen, smiling.

“How do you know Pete?” said Sarah. There was tension behind the question. David hadn’t told her about Karen Page yet, so she had no way of knowing that there was no need to tiptoe around this woman when it came to the subject of Frank Castle.

“We, uh, _met_ about a year and a half ago,” said Karen in a distinctly rueful tone. Frank actually looked sheepish. David was fascinated, and Sarah visibly relaxed.

“Yeah, I didn’t exactly make a good first impression,” said Frank.

“Why, did it involve guns?” David muttered. He didn’t mean it, but their reactions told him he’d hit it right on the head. “Okay!” he said with a loud, awkward laugh, clapping his hands together. “Who’s up for Pictionary?”

“Hey, you promised we’d play my Sherlock Holmes game!” Leo protested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a bear to write. Eventually I realized the first part of New Year's at the Liebermans' needed to be from David's perspective, not Karen's, but even then it fought me a lot. In the end, what saved it was letting Leo and Zach run amuck through the adults' attempts to get through the introductions. Next chapter will be the rest of New Year's Eve (and then I'll finally be able to post the next chapter of Matt's side of the story, which is already written). 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's left kudos, and especially to everyone leaving reviews!


	6. That Damn Rosé

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't find a place in the chapter to mention this, but Karen's wearing black leggings, a swishy dress that comes down to just above her knees, and ankle boots.

Because David had promised, they played Leo’s Sherlock Holmes game first. Leo decided she would be on Karen’s team, Zach would be on Sarah’s, and Frank and David would make the third team. The game involved choosing mystery cards of difficulties ranging from “Elementary” to “Fiendish” and attempting to solve them before the sand ran out in the little hourglass timer. Karen had a lot of fun, and not just because she and Leo ended up winning (David and Frank hot on their heels, mostly because of David).

“Okay, why don’t you guys pick out our next game?” said David, getting up. “Pete and I will bring in the food.”

As soon as the men left the room, Leo turned to Karen. “Are you really dating Pete?” she asked.

“Leo!” said Sarah reprovingly, while Zach snickered.

“It’s okay,” said Karen. “I’m not sure ‘dating’ is the word for it, but he’s very important to me.”

“Why?” said Zach. Sarah shot him a stern look. He shifted slightly away from her but stuck out his chin defiantly.

“You know that bomber in the news a few weeks ago?” said Karen, more amused than offended. Explaining why she felt the way she did about Frank was something she wasn’t sure she knew how to do, but she could give them part of it.

“Yeah,” said Zach. Leo scooted forward slightly on her couch cushion, and even Sarah no longer looked mortified by her children’s nosiness.

“Well, I was one of his targets in the hotel attack, and Fr- _Pete_ risked getting shot by police and armed guards to get me out of there safely, even though he was the most wanted man in the city.”

“Then he _wasn’t_ working with the bomber,” said Leo. It wasn’t a question, and her expression was triumphant. Karen smiled at her.

“No, he definitely was not. And that was the third time he’s saved my life.” Her smile turned soft as she let the memories wash over her. It was nice being in a house with people who would believe this about Frank because they’d experienced his protective side too.

“Wow,” said Leo, looking rather starry-eyed. Sarah clearly agreed.

“So, what, you’re like the damsel in distress?” said Zach, who seemed determined not to be impressed.

“Well,” said Karen before Sarah could scold him. “He did jump in front of a few bullets for me.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “But then the bomber grabbed me before I could get away, and he was holding a dead man’s switch. Do you know what that means?”

Zach nodded.

“Then you know Pete couldn’t do anything about that, but he did know how to defuse the bomb. He kept talking to the bomber, but he was really talking to me in code.” Zach’s and Leo’s eyes widened. “He helped me find the right wire to pull, because I couldn’t look at what I was grabbing without the bomber noticing. When Pete gave the signal, I pulled the wire and shot the bomber in the foot with the gun in my purse. Then I fixed Pete’s dislocated shoulder and helped him get out past a hallway full of cops by pretending to be his hostage.”

“So it’s more like _you_ rescued _him_ ,” said Leo, grinning.

“We were a team,” said Karen. “We got each other out of there alive.”

X

For Frank, seeing all four Liebermans back together was just _right_ and only a little bittersweet. He was happy for them, and having Karen there with him spared him from feeling like some kind of fifth wheel. The game had been pretty fun, too, and he wouldn’t mind passing most of the time left until 2017 like that, but he still welcomed a couple minutes in the kitchen with David. The food was mostly ready to go; all they had to do was stuff the miniature croissants with the chicken salad filling and then bring everything out.

“You got rid of the beard,” Frank observed. David was clean-shaven now, and his wild curls had been cropped back a few inches.

“And you grew one,” David shot back, grinning, spooning filling from the bowl into the first croissant.

Frank shrugged. “Easy disguise.”

“Yeah,” said David. “Sarah wasn’t a fan of the hobo look on me.”

“How’ve you been doing?” Frank asked before David could get a chance to interrogate him about Karen.

“I’m good, Frank,” said David. “Being back here...it’s amazing.”

“Then how come you look like you’re getting about the same quality sleep as you were in that basement?”

“I guess I’ve been having a hard time ‘quieting my mind’.”

“Nightmares?” said Frank, setting a completed sandwich on the platter.

“Yeah. You know, I had plenty of those over the last year? I’ve just got to really get it through my head that it’s over.”

“Any chatter?”

“Nothing. I even hacked into the hospital’s security feed. Billy’s still in a coma. Armed guards posted outside his door around the clock.”

Frank didn’t want to talk about Billy. “You back at the NSA?”

David shook his head. “My old bosses offered me my job back with enough of a raise to keep me quiet, but I didn’t really want to go back to working for people who helped Carson Wolf paint me as a traitor after he shot me. In the end, I didn’t have to, because Hernandez decided he could put me to better use in Homeland.”

“Yeah, and he wants you to keep Madani out of trouble.”

“I do have her password,” said David, grinning. “I’m pretty much already set up for that.”

“Maybe you can help them come up with less shitty tactical plans for their operations.”

“Kind of a low bar to clear. But yeah. Hernandez was impressed with my plan to fake my own death—again—to save Sarah and Zach without giving Rawlins the information he wanted.”

“You’re done using that strategy, though, yeah?” said Frank with a glare.

“Yeah.”

The sandwiches were done, so they gathered up the first load of stuff to take out to the living room.

X

They held off on starting a new game while they ate. In addition to the chicken salad sandwiches and the cheese ball and crackers Karen had brought, there were fruit and veggie platters and homemade latkes (since it was the second-to-last night of Hanukkah). It was all delicious.

“So what do you do, Karen?” said Sarah when everyone had mostly cleared their first plates.

“I’m an investigative journalist at the New York Bulletin,” said Karen. “I write about local crime and corruption. I’ve only been there a year, and it’s hard work, but I love it.”

“Does that make you like a detective?” said Zach.

“She’s like a bloodhound for trouble, is what she is,” said Frank with a mixture of pride and exasperation as he reached for another sandwich.

Karen shot Frank a glare that was far too amused to have any impact, and he grinned. She turned to face Zach again, though she didn’t miss the look Sarah and David exchanged at their behavior. “Detectives solve cases for clients or the police, but I find stories people are trying to hide from the public and bring them to light.”

“Sounds pretty cool,” said Leo.

“What stories are you working on now?” said David thickly around a mouthful of sandwich, earning him a scandalized glance from Sarah. It seemed his table manners had suffered from the year underground.

“The main one I’m working on right now is about these white nationalist guys who’ve been stirring up some trouble in the city.” Frank gave a contemptuous grunt at this point, which was about how he’d reacted when she first told him about these guys. She went on, “At first I didn’t think there was going to be much to it. Some of the guys who trashed that Turkish restaurant were arrested, and the rest of them slunk back under their troll bridges after that. I’ve found a few websites where they coordinate, though. They’re local, and I think they might all trace back to the same person, or maybe a small group of people. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff they write. These guys hide behind internet anonymity to get away with saying anything they want.”

“I could find out who made the sites,” said David blithely.

Karen gaped at him. She looked at Frank, then Sarah, then back to David. “Uh, yeah, that could be really helpful.”

“It sounds like pretty rewarding work,” said Sarah.

“What about you?” said Karen, scooping a few pieces of pineapple onto her plate from the fruit platter.

“Well, I _was_ working as the floor manager at my parents’ furniture store, but now that David’s back, I’m looking at finishing my master’s program.”

“Ooh, that’s exciting. What are you studying?”

“Sociolinguistics,” said Sarah. “Focusing on European languages.”

They spent a few minutes talking about Sarah’s program, which segued into Sarah and David talking about how he’d pretty much added a linguistics minor in undergrad just so he could be in more of her classes. Eventually, Zach tried to sneak out of the living room to go upstairs, so they canned the grownup talk and got back to the games. Two rounds of Pictionary (girls versus guys this time), three of Scum, and one of Telestrations later, they were coming up on midnight, and the ball was about to drop on TV. Leo and Zach were both sitting in front of it, trying to hide how tired they were. David had opened Frank’s bottle of rosé during the first game of Scum, then dug out another bottle during Telestrations.

11:59 arrived, and they were all on their feet for the countdown. Frank was the least enthusiastic about participating in it, but when midnight brought him a kiss on the cheek from Karen, his grin was as wide as any of theirs.

The kids stumbled up the stairs to get ready for bed just a few minutes later, after saying sleepy farewells to Frank and Karen. Karen, though more than a bit tipsy by now from a few glasses of rosé and the champagne to toast the new year, helped Sarah clear up all the leftovers while David and Frank put away the games.

“I’m really glad you came tonight,” said Sarah, handing Karen a lidded container to put the rest of the latkes in. “Even after everything Frank did for us, I kinda think Leo and Zach were still scared of him.”

“Is that why you’ve been calling him Pete around them?”

“Yeah.” She shook her head and chuckled a little. “Maybe it’s silly. But it can’t hurt, I guess, if that’s his new legal identity anyway. Spending time with someone else who trusts him went a lot farther than using a name they know is fake, though.”

“You wanna know a secret?” said Karen. She might’ve been slurring just a tiny bit.

Sarah raised her eyebrows, amused.

“I don’t like the name Pete at all.”

Sarah snorted. “Well I hope it won’t be enough of a deterrent to stop the two of you from coming back. We’d love to have you over again. And speaking for myself, it’s so nice having another adult to talk to who knows the whole story.”

“I’d like that too,” said Karen. “I’ll see if I can persuade Frank not to be a stranger.”

X

With Times Square smack in between the Liebermans’ in Queens and Karen’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and over a million people crowding all the surrounding streets, Frank decided this was a good night for Karen to see his apartment. He could’ve just let her get a cab back, but he didn’t like the idea of her out this late by herself on the biggest party night of the year in New York City when she was too drunk to aim her gun. She was also too drunk to complain about his overprotectiveness—or at least to notice that he wasn’t driving towards Manhattan—, so it worked out. She spent the short drive giggling and singing along badly to the radio, which was adorable enough to make Frank feel completely overwhelmed.

When they reached his place, some of his neighbors in the next building over were setting off illegal fireworks in the courtyard. Nobody was likely to pay any attention to himself and Karen with that racket going on, but it wouldn’t be worth it if it brought the cops. Karen still hadn’t questioned the destination, and she clung to his arm with both of hers as he led the way to his door. Once inside, he tossed the keys onto the counter next to the cactus and they shed their coats.

“Hey, Karen,” he said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out the crumpled pamphlet from Fogwell’s Gym, “I mighta found you a lead in your story—” But he’d only gotten the pamphlet halfway out when she swayed towards him, grabbed his shoulders, and clumsily bumped her lips against his. He was just as startled as he had been when she’d hugged him, a move that had marked his first affectionate physical contact with another human in a year and a half.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, throat so dry all of a sudden that the words came out in a rasp. He caught her face in his hands to stop her from coming back in for a second attempt.

“Kissing you,” she said.

He realized that they were standing with his body pressing hers into the wall beside the door, and he had no memory of moving there. He could feel her body heat seeping through the soft fabric of her dress. “How much of that rosé did you drink?”

“Sarah gave me her glass when I noticed she hadn’t been drinking any, and I had a few of my own, so...most of it?”

He moved his hands to brace against the wall. She was like a gravitational force he needed to physically push himself away from. The only thing keeping him steady was the knowledge that the first time he kissed her or anything beyond that was _not_ going to be while she was drunk.

Something like disappointment flashed in her eyes. It looked like the alcohol hadn’t affected her ability to read his mind. Still, she smiled. “I like this,” she said, scratching her fingers gently through the two weeks’ worth of beard growth on his cheek and jaw. “Looks good on you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am,” said Frank, the corners of his mouth pulling up. Maria had never liked his beard and he’d always had to keep it shaved when he was on tour anyway, but even though he’d only grown it to this length for practicality’s sake, he definitely wouldn’t count it as a drawback if Karen liked it. He took a step back from her. “Come on, I’ll get you something to change into, and you can take the bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Year's Eve in New York City is a really convenient way to get Karen to spend the night at Frank's apartment. 
> 
> Also I decided on linguistics for Sarah's major because it seems like a good one to give her and David common interests (based on what Ebon Moss-Bachrach has said, David has a lot of linguistics training as well as mad hacking skillz, and it's already canon that they met in an upperclassman French lit class), while also being the kind of major you can do for general self-improvement even if you're not going to pursue a career in it.
> 
> And yes, that was not a mistake; the story is set at the end of 2016/beginning of 2017. It's the only way the Marvel Netflix timeline makes sense to me.


	7. Fagan Corners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: this chapter includes a brief, non-graphic description of attempted sexual assault.

A stripe of morning sunlight fell across Karen’s face, which confused her for a second—her bedroom didn’t face east. But then the events of the previous night came back to her. Mercifully, she didn’t seem to have a hangover. She yawned and gave a long, leisurely stretch before briefly snuggling into the blankets once more. Frank’s twin mattress was not the best quality surface to sleep on, but it was warm and cozy and smelled like him, so she’d still slept about as well as she would have in her own bed.

She probably could have gone back to sleep, but instead she got up and went out to the living room, still wearing the t-shirt and sweats Frank had lent her. She found him sprawled on the sofa, one arm curled behind his head, the other holding up a slightly battered book. And he was shirtless. Karen hadn’t so much as seen him in short sleeves before, and now she wasn’t entirely convinced she was actually awake yet. There was still some bruising on his ribs and of course an absurd number of scars, but it was going to take a lot of willpower not to run her hands over those abs.

“Mornin’,” he said, lowering the book so he could smile at her.

In an effort to hide the fact that she’d been ogling him, she hastily forced her eyes to read the title of the book. _The Count of Monte Cristo_. She smirked. “Are your literary selections always this apt?”

“It was Curtis’s idea,” said Frank, swinging himself into a sitting position, leaving the end cushion free for her to curl up on. To her chagrin, he also grabbed the black henley off the back of the couch and tugged it on.

“That’s at least the third time you’ve mentioned this Curtis guy,” she said. “I’d like to meet him sometime.”

“Think I can make that happen,” said Frank. “You sleep good?”

He might be fully clothed now, but his hair was sleep-tousled, which was almost as detrimental to her concentration as his torso. “Well, I definitely preferred the Christmas Eve sleeping arrangements to the New Year’s Eve ones, but yeah.”

“Me too,” said Frank, ducking his head a bit, “but it might, uh, it might make it a little hard to stick to the plan if we do too much of that.”

“The plan where this is a relationship in every sense except physically until you’re sure you know how to find purpose without a war to fight?” she said, poking his leg with her toe.

He huffed out a rueful chuckle. “That’s the one.”

Karen’s smile fell and her heart started beating faster. “Frank?” she said before she could chicken out. What better day to do this than the start of the new year?

He looked at her, a crease between his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“You said you wanted to hear my whole story. Is now a good time for that?”

“Well that’d be up to you, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s never going to feel like a good time,” she said. “And that makes now as good a time as it’ll ever be.”

He shut the book and set it aside. “I’m all ears.”

X

Frank watched Karen close her eyes and take a deep breath. “At that diner, you said maybe me pulling my gun on you wasn’t my first rodeo.”

He nodded.

“It wasn’t. It wasn’t even my second.” She clenched and unclenched her hands. “I had a brother.”

He shot her a sharp look. She did a good job of hiding it behind the façade of pencil skirts and neat blouses, but he’d always suspected she’d been through some rough shit in her life. He hadn’t thought that might include a death in the family, though. But maybe he’d only skipped over that possibility because he hadn’t wanted to imagine her going through that kind of agony.

She offered a shaky smile. “Kevin. He was a year and a half younger than me. When we were kids, we were inseparable, but when I got to high school, I was suddenly too cool to hang out with him. I spent so much time with my friends and at basketball practice that I had no idea what was going on with him anymore by the time I was a senior, but my sweet little brother had gotten mixed up with Tommy Simms, the only drug dealer in Fagan Corners, who happened to be the mayor’s son.”

Frank knew exactly the kind of asshole kid she was talking about. He’d run afoul of a few of them when he was in school. He hadn’t gotten his first broken nose from a boxing match. “I’m guessing that means none of the shit he pulled stuck to him,” he said.

Karen let out a derisive snort. “The whole town was too busy kissing his daddy’s ass to do anything about him, and whenever anyone tried, the honorable Mayor Simms would start pulling strings. He got one teacher fired and sued another, and that’s just what I knew about. And Tommy was Kevin’s new best friend. My parents didn’t have a clue all the way up until Kevin ended up in a jail cell for possession. They’re a mechanic and a school teacher, and neither of us had ever been in trouble before. They had no idea what to do. They tried grounding him, but he just sneaked out anyway. I thought he was being an idiot, and I told him that to his face, but I didn’t want to waste my time trying to get him to knock it off.”

Frank could hear plenty of pain and guilt in her voice. He didn’t have the words to express how much he hated that she knew what that was like.

“On December 8, 2007, I was at a party with my friends when Kevin called me. He sounded panicked, and he told me he was done hanging out with Tommy. Tommy had invited him to meet some of his _other_ friends, who turned out to be members of a gang from Boston. Kevin thought they’d just be smoking pot and maybe tagging a few buildings, but they had weapons, and they were planning an armed robbery somewhere in Massachusetts. He didn’t know what to do. I finally remembered that being a big sister means something, and I promised I’d help him.”

She faltered, but she’d gotten so far now that he doubted she could’ve stopped if she’d wanted to. There were tears welling up in her eyes. “He-he was driving back home when he called me, and he was just a couple of miles out. Then I heard another voice. I guess Tommy had pulled up next to him on the road. He yelled that Kevin didn’t get to back out of this so easy. I heard the engine when Kevin floored it, trying to get away. Twenty seconds later, the line cut out. I called 911 and made my friend Tanya drive me out to where Kevin was. We got there a few minutes after the paramedics. Kevin’s car had gone off the road and through a fence. I watched them pull him out of the car and do CPR on him for twenty straight minutes before pronouncing him dead.”

She barely made it to the end of the last sentence, her voice was already so choked with tears. After she got it out, she pressed both hands to her face and shook with sobs. Frank pulled her into his arms and let her cry it out against his chest, not caring about the twinging of his ribs. A few minutes passed that way. Then he heard her stomach rumble and realized that he felt pretty hungry himself. “I’ma make you some breakfast, okay?”

“Okay,” said Karen.

They got up and went the five steps or so it took to reach the kitchen. He didn’t have a table, just a couple of stools tucked under the counter. Karen sat down on one and watched while he pulled a carton of eggs and a package of sausages out of the fridge and set a skillet on the stove.

“What happened to Tommy Simms?” he said once the sausage was sizzling.

“I told the police officer on the scene everything I had heard over the phone, but by the next day, the crash was already in the papers as an ‘accident.’ I went to the police station to find out why they weren’t investigating, and they told me there wasn’t enough evidence to start an investigation. I knew—I just _knew_ that Tommy was going to be completely free and clear like he always was.”

“You went after him,” said Frank. It wasn’t a question. Obviously that’s what she would’ve done. He started flipping the sausages.

“You know,” she said, “when I first found out why you’d gone after those gangs, there was a part of me that envied you.”

Frank looked over his shoulder at her, brow furrowed. What the hell was there to envy about his situation?

“You actually did it,” she said. “I couldn’t. It was the first time I’d held a gun besides Dad giving me basic gun safety lessons when I was little, but I didn’t fire it. Tommy pissed his pants and cried and swore he’d only been trying to scare Kevin into not ratting him out, and whether or not he was telling the truth, I couldn’t make myself pull the trigger. And nothing happened after that. No charges. No investigation. No news story. Nothing. His involvement in Kevin’s death never came to light, and he just...got away with it.” She snorted. “If you call OD-ing on crack in Boston a few months later ‘getting away with it,’ anyway.”

Frank thought about what Jimmy had told him Tuesday night—how he wished there was something to blame for losing his wife and baby. And Karen wished she’d been able to do something about the piece of shit who cost her her brother. Frank knew he’d do exactly the same thing over again every single time if he went back to the day he came out of the coma. But he was glad Karen didn’t have to live with that hanging over her. He was a soldier, but she’d just been a kid.

“How do you like your eggs?” he said.

“Over easy, yolks not too runny.”

“How many you want?”

“Two’s good.”

He started cracking eggs into the skillet. Two for her, four for him, unless she changed her mind and wanted a third. “When was the last time you saw your folks?”

He glanced over at her in time to see her press her lips together and run her hands up and down her arms. “It’s been a few years,” she admitted. “I left for college and visited during school breaks, but I haven’t been back to Vermont since I moved to New York.”

“How come?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Ready for the second rodeo?”

“Course.”

“I graduated high school and headed off to the University of Vermont for college. I spent most of my time there partying and drinking, scraping by with a B- average—just enough to avoid academic probation. I don’t know if that was more an attempt to cope with Kevin’s death or with what I almost did to Tommy. Either way, it didn’t work. I’m not even sure how I made it to finishing my bachelor’s, but one weekend in my final semester, I was at one of those parties and a pretty big guy started getting too close.”

Frank stiffened. Some of the rage that had possessed him when Lewis Wilson made his first threat against Karen over the radio was seeping into him now. He reached for the cupboard and grabbed a couple of plates out of it, then turned to meet her gaze. She gave him a small but reassuring smile, and he forced himself to resume tending the skillet.

“Vermont is an open carry state,” she went on, “and this guy had his handgun strapped to his hip like a cowboy. He got more and more aggressive, wouldn’t take no for an answer. The music in the house was so loud that I don’t think anyone else noticed what he was trying to do. He started pulling me towards one of the bedrooms, and he was too strong to fight off.”

Frank’s ears were ringing and a familiar reddish haze was beginning to obscure his vision as he pictured a large, faceless frat boy bearing down on Karen and making her afraid, but he was still listening.

“I realized my best chance was to play along until he dropped his guard enough for me to get the gun, so that’s what I did.” She broke off with a humorless laugh. “I still remember the shock on his face when I pointed it at him and snapped the safety off. It was like he couldn’t fathom how anything about his approach could have led to that. But the shock only lasted a second. Then he lunged for me and tried to get the gun away. I got banged up pretty bad in the struggle, but I managed to pull the trigger. He took the bullet in the gut.”

Frank could see it happening, and the ringing vanished, along with the red haze. “Attagirl,” he said. He started flipping the eggs, his movements jerky.

“He spent a long time in surgery, but he survived. I had so many bruises the next day that it was an easy self-defense case, especially because there had already been complaints against him from other girls. Not much happens in Vermont, so it was in the headlines for weeks. In the end, the university expelled him, and he’ll be in jail for another five years.”

“Sounds like he got off easy,” Frank growled.

Karen was silent while the eggs finished cooking, and she still said nothing until he turned around with two loaded plates. He knew what kind of look she’d be giving him before he saw it, but he faced her stern expression anyway.

“He got exactly what he deserved, Frank,” she said. “Down a kidney from the gunshot wound, convicted of aggravated assault and attempted aggravated sexual assault, his best dating years behind bars, and his face plastered on the state sex offender registry for the rest of his life. I’m not telling you about this so you’ll go to war for me against some douchebag who’s ancient history.”

His jaw clenched, but he didn’t argue. She was wrong about what the asshole deserved, but this was her call. He set the plates down and took the seat beside her. Then he frowned, something from earlier coming back to him. “What’s rodeo number two got to do with you and your parents?”

She sighed and skewered a sausage on her fork. “Somehow, it hit them harder than it hit me. They’d already lost Kevin. They didn’t want me to leave for school in the first place because they were afraid they’d lose me too, and then, from where they were standing, it seemed like they nearly did. I had to fight them so hard just to be able to finish my last semester, and they assumed I’d be moving home after that. I felt trapped. I was grown up, and I’d proven that I could take care of myself.

“I know they just wanted to keep me safe, but they were doing it the way you keep a mint-condition collectible safe—by never taking it out of the box. I didn’t want to keep sleeping in my old bedroom, across the hall from Kevin’s room, which Mom refused to clear out. I didn’t want to keep living in a town that had refused to give him justice but wouldn’t stop gossipping about Karen Page, the girl who ran off to college and partied until she almost killed a guy. I had my degree, so I started applying for any kind of job I thought might take me, and the one that finally did was in New York.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty much my theory about Karen's backstory, based on all the tantalizing hints we've gotten, from "You really think this is the first time I've shot someone?" to the article about her brother's car accident to why she's so incredibly guarded about it all to why she seemed to expect Ben and Ellison to write her off because they knew something about it to why she apparently doesn't have a strong relationship with her parents. I feel like she must've had bad experiences with both the justice system and the press to have become the pursue-the-truth-at-all-costs person she is when she meets Matt and Foggy. I don't think she actually killed anyone in the past, because that would make Ben and Ellison's reactions a little surprising, but I do think she came close, possibly multiple times. I don't think her parents were abusive—or, at least, I think it would be more interesting for Karen as a character if the reason she avoids Vermont is based more on her own issues than on what her parents have done. 
> 
> So yeah, I hope you guys liked it!


	8. Rodeo Number Three

They ate most of their food in silence, and Karen ended up stealing half of Frank’s fourth egg. She could feel his eyes on her while he emptied his second mug of coffee.

“I don’t wanna tell you your business, Karen,” he said. “You feel like you don’t want to see your parents, that’s up to you.”

Karen stiffened. One reason that she avoided the subject of her family was that she didn’t want people pressuring her about it. Somehow she knew it would be much harder to shrug Frank off than if it had been anyone else. She picked up her plate and took it to the sink, as if the counter could serve as a buffer between her and the point he was about to make.

“If I still had Lisa,” he said, his voice suddenly extra rough, “I don’t think I’d’a done any different than them. I wouldn’t want to let her outta my sight for a second, and I’d probably be driving her crazy. I know it’s not the same. She was a kid and you were a grown-ass woman, but that don’t mean shit. As a parent, you love ‘em so much, it’s real easy to get stupid about it.”

At the sink, Karen pressed a hand to her mouth and braced herself against the countertop, fighting to keep her shoulders from shaking. She was glad she wasn’t facing him. Listening to Frank talk about his family was never going to get less painful, was it? Was that really how her parents felt too? It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about how they felt, but she’d definitely avoided dwelling on it. She still emailed them about once a month and usually answered the inevitable phone call she got in response, but she always immediately shut down any hints that she should come for a visit.

“That ain’t all, is it?” said Frank, coming around the counter with his plate. “Tommy Simms and the asshole at the party.”

Karen gripped the edge of the sink with both hands now. “No.” He set his plate in the sink and covered her hand with his. She felt nervous again. Not at the prospect of Frank’s reaction, just at how much she was going to have to relive in order to talk about it. She’d lived the last twenty months in fear that this darkest secret would get out, and she’d locked it away tight.

Slowly, while he hand-washed their dishes and she dried them, she told him the story of Union Allied. Of realizing there was something wrong with the pension file. Of waking up covered in the blood of her coworker. Of Matt and Foggy showing up out of the blue to be her lawyers. Of meeting and working with Ben Urich to find the truth.

Just like when she’d told him about her would-be rapist, he tensed up when she got to the parts about the guard who tried to murder her in her cell and the assassin waiting in her apartment, but she was quick to reassure him that she’d stopped the guard herself and that the man who later became Daredevil stopped the assassin.

“Aw, hell, he saved your life?” said Frank. “Now I’m sorry I took a shot at him when he jumped me on that rooftop. You coulda been dead before I ever met you if it wasn’t for him. I guess I missed my chance to thank him.”

Karen stared at him incredulously. “You shot at Daredevil? When did this happen?”

“First time he got in my way. I had a shot lined up on Grotto from the roof of the hospital, when you had him with you in your car. Then Red came outta nowhere. I probably owe him another one for stopping me making an even worse first impression on you than I already did.”

She snorted. “No shit. But you shot at Daredevil? Seriously?”

“Yep,” he said, drying his hands on the checkered dish towel. “He had me on the ropes and Grotto was getting away, so I grabbed the 9mm off my ankle and cracked one off his armor-plated forehead.”

“What the hell, Frank? You shot him in the head!”

He didn’t look proud of it. “It was a warning to get him to back off. Did about as much good as using you as bait to get you to back off.”

The last thing he’d said earlier sank in. As far as everyone was supposed to know, Daredevil was protecting the city just like usual. Danny Rand wearing the suit was what kept her and Foggy safe from Daredevil’s enemies ever making the connection between him and Matt. “Wait, you know—”

“That Murdock was Daredevil and whoever’s been running around in his red PJs for the last few months ain’t him? Yeah, I know. I saw him in the suit with the mask off once, but that just confirmed what I already mostly figured out listening to him talk.”

“Then I guess you were paying better attention than I was,” said Karen, leaning back against the counter, arms crossed. “You’d think I was the blind one, after all that time it was staring me in the face and I didn’t see it.”

Frank shrugged. “People see what they’re looking for. Murdock was good at getting people to underestimate him as a physical threat. Something you had in common with him.”

“And I guess you saw through us both,” said Karen. “So does that mean you already knew when you gave me that whole speech about holding on with two hands?”

“All I knew when I gave you that speech was that I was using the only person who’d been willing to help me as bait, and I wanted you to get as far away from me as possible, so I figured I’d see if I could point you in another direction. I’da talked about Nelson instead if I’d thought that would do the trick.”

“It was all still true, though,” she said, catching his left hand in both of hers and resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Just, not about me and Matt.”

He chuckled. “I guess we’re all blind about some things.” He reached up and caught a lock of her hair between his fingers. “But I believe we’ve gotten off topic, Miss Page.”

She let go of him with an anxious chuckle. “I’d say I need something stronger than coffee if we’re gonna go there, but I’m trying not to do a repeat of last night.”

That got a real laugh out of him. “Alright,” he said, turning to the fridge. “Think you can risk a beer? It’s the rosé that keeps making women try to kiss me.”

“Women, plural?” said Karen. “Are you trying to make me jealous?”

Frank suddenly looked intensely uncomfortable, and Karen covered her face with one hand to smother a fit of giggles.

“It was an accident,” he said. “I checked in on Sarah a few times to make sure she and the kids were safe. She still didn’t know David was alive, and I guess I gave her the wrong idea, because after she got half a bottle of that rosé in her, she went for it. David saw it all on camera, and he spent the rest of the day drunk off his ass ’cause he thought I was gonna steal his wife or some shit.”

Karen smiled. She understood perfectly how Sarah could’ve ended up in that position, but it was a little incredible that Frank managed to be so oblivious to his own gruff, masculine-yet-gentlemanly appeal. It was like all the best parts of chivalry had been carved in his bones, while none of the misogynistic bullshit parts had ever so much as crossed his mind. “I’ll take the beer,” she said. If she kept teasing him, she’d get so far off topic that she’d never get around to telling him the rest.

They returned to the couch. “It was so stupid,” said Karen. “In the end, what Marlene told us wasn’t what got Fisk locked up, it was financial records and a dirty cop’s testimony. But at the time, we had nothing and Fisk owned the police, so I couldn’t just sit there if there was even the thinnest lead to follow. So I tricked Ben into coming with me to see Fisk’s mom. We got her story. And then the next night, I was kidnapped from outside my apartment by James Wesley, Fisk’s second-in-command.”

Frank nearly choked on his beer, then fixed her with a piercing stare. His reactions to all the dangerous parts of her story had her thinking back to the psychologist they’d gotten as an expert witness during his trial, and what he’d said about the damage from the bullet. She wondered if Frank was having a hard time dividing past from present with what she was telling him, just like he did with the moment of his family’s deaths. So she hastened to give him the rest of it.

“I woke up on a chair in a warehouse. Wesley had drugged me and taken me there. He had big plans for me. I was going to smooth over all the bad PR I’d been bringing Fisk by not abiding by the terms of the payoff, or else Wesley would have everyone I cared about killed. But he mentioned that he hadn’t told Fisk about my visit to his mother yet, and he put his gun down on the table between us.” Frank scoffed and leaned back before fixing his gaze on her again.

“He was just ironing out the last few details of his ‘offer’ when his phone rang,” said Karen. “I grabbed the gun. He didn’t think I’d use it. Tried to trick me into thinking it wasn’t loaded. I called his bluff with seven rounds to the chest.”

Anyone else would probably have started reassuring her that she’d done what she had to do and that she shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Not Frank. Either he could tell that she didn’t feel guilty about it anyway or it didn’t occur to him that it was the kind of thing most people would feel guilty about. “I shoulda killed that fat piece of shit when I had the chance,” he spat. “Does anyone know?”

Karen stared at him, surprised by his intensity. She’d gotten down to only one nightmare about Fisk finding her and murdering her every other week, so she hadn’t expected to make Frank afraid for her life. “N-no. I mean, it’s been over a year and a half. Fisk would’ve sent someone after me by now if he knew. And I was careful. I wiped my prints on my way out, I didn’t see anyone until I was blocks away from that building, and I tossed the gun in the river the first chance I got. I didn’t even tell Matt or Foggy about it.” The tears were back, but she drowned them with most of the rest of her beer. “He found out about Ben visiting his mother, though. He killed him because of me. And it was all for nothing, because it turns out that an old lady with dementia isn’t enough of a source to prove that a respected member of the community committed patricide as a kid, and Ben’s story never made it to print.”

“If Fisk ever sets foot outside that prison, he’s a dead man,” said Frank.

The temperature of the apartment seemed to drop five degrees. That was the Punisher talking. Karen was torn between reassurance at the idea that Fisk or anyone working for him would have to go through Frank if they wanted to get to her, and horror at the thought of him waging a war on her behalf—both feelings a hundred times stronger than when he’d expressed his dissatisfaction with the punishment meted out to Landon Mears. Because unlike with him, it wouldn’t just be Fisk. It would be everyone on his payroll. Likely more men than the Irish, the bikers, and the cartel combined.

“Frank?” said Karen. She reached for his hand and held it tight. “Please. You’ve got a clean record. I know better than to think there’s no circumstance you’d think is worth jeopardizing it for, and after everything I’ve told you, I’d be a hypocrite to try and say there’s no circumstance under which I’d think it would be the right thing to do. Just promise me you won’t put that vest back on unless we can be sure there isn’t another option.”

The silence was heavier than any they’d had that morning. “I promise,” he said at last, and she was sure he’d only given her that much because she’d left him some wiggle room. His grip on her hand tightened and his gaze intensified. “But if I ever find out you’re in danger, you know I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

“I know,” she said. Damn it, but any more beer and she doubted she would have been able to resist the urge to kiss him. “But maybe you could have a little better regard for your own wellbeing while you’re at it? I don’t think I can handle seeing you hurt as bad as you were in that elevator again.”

He dropped his head, but she thought she could see him smiling. “I’ll see what I can do.”

X

Frank drove Karen back to Hell’s Kitchen not long after that. The New Year’s Eve partiers had cleared out, but it felt like the city itself was hungover. More litter, fewer people out and about, plenty of shops closed for the holiday, and the general bustle seemed sluggish.

He walked her up to her door, where they parted with one of their lingering hugs that made her feel like everything was alright. She spent the next couple of hours planning out how she was going to tackle her story during the week. She wanted to find out how many guys were passing out pamphlets like the one Frank had found, which would mean doing some legwork, and depending on what David turned up for her about the people behind the websites, she might be able to start writing the actual article.

But work couldn’t distract her indefinitely. She picked up her phone and opened her contacts. After pacing around for several minutes, she finally hit the call button and held the phone up to her ear.

It only rang once. _“Hello?”_

“Hi, Dad,” said Karen. Her throat burned.

_“Karen! Is something wrong? We’re always the ones who call you.”_

“Everything’s fine,” she said, feeling a sharp stab of guilt that a simple call could be so surprising to him. “I’m sorry I missed your call last week. Actually, I’m sorry I’ve been so bad at staying in touch. How are you and Mom?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One thing I see a lot in Kastle fanfiction that really bugs me is Karen being afraid to confide in Frank about Wesley because she thinks he'll go Punisher on her or he won't understand why she felt like she had to do it or something. I think that's ridiculous. I think Karen knows Frank well enough to know that he wouldn't judge her for doing what was necessary. She'd only be worried about him getting overprotective of her. 
> 
> I didn't expect this one to cover topics like Sarah kissing Frank and Frank shooting at Matt, but they ended up meandering around off-topic for a while, which felt too much like how real conversations go to try to rein in. But my favorite parts are Frank talking about her parents and what she does about that at the end of the chapter. I might've cried.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought!


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